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Friday, May 4, 2012

Preparing for Mother's Day Program

This is our last Sunday before the primary children sing in church. They will be singing two songs:

"Mother Dear" and "I Often Go Walking."

I want to take this week to focus on preparing them to sing, making sure they know the words really well, and getting them to sing "with gusto."

I have three activities prepared, so we can sing the same songs over and over.

Activity #1: Echo Chamber (for repetition to help learn lyrics)
I was originally going to have one side of the room echo the other side of the room, but when I went to stake primary training, our stake music leader had an even better idea ... so I have to think I am receiving inspiration that this is a worthy activity!

Her version is to have the children actually get up out of their seats, and move to the four corners of the room. One corner will sing one verse of the song, and then each subsequent corner will sing it so that we are doing a four-series echo! I am looking forward to this and think it will be a lot of fun.

I think I might even mix it up by changing the direction of the echo fast, or pointing and having the kids responding and making that part of the "game."

Obviously, the benefit here is that the children will learn the song even better by all the repetition.

Activity #2: How Loud Can You Sing? (for gusto to help singing with volume)
This one is deliberately AFTER the echo chamber to help cement the lyrics in their minds before we work on volume.



I printed up a card for each song - one set for junior, one set for senior, so four total. I will tell the children to sing as loudly as possible, and then send someone down the hall to post the card matching that song on the wall representing how far away they were before they couldn't hear us singing.

After church, the children can go see how loudly they sang and if their card made it all the day down the hallway. I made sure to use pictures because not everyone in junior primary can read yet.

I am debating whether to send a child, two children, or one of the counselors. ...

Activity #3: Staccato Song (to practice enunciation) ... or ...? I haven't thought this one through yet ...
Okay, I keep changing my mind about Activity #3 ... so I might do an activity having to do with singing Staccato ...

... or I might just work on other review songs ... or new songs ...

or I might do a class SING.
Sing the whole song but have one child or teacher sing each word of the song ...

or I might work on having Boys sing one vs. Girls in another verse ... something I wanted to do in sacrament but didn't have time to teach the song well enough to practice yet.



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